Fifa's $2bn investment dream and the NFL’s class action suit

Just two years after launch and Fifa is already looking to raise $2 billion to expand its Fifa+ OTT platform. StreamTime Sports co-hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone analyse what Fifa is trying to do here, as well as providing their initial reactions to the NFL’s legal issues with the Sunday Ticket class action suit.

Key points:

• Why did Fifa decide to originally invest in launching its own DTC platform?
• Where has Fifa+ fallen short?
• How will Fifa invest $2bn in the platform?
• Can the NFL win its appeal in the Sunday Ticket class action suit?
• What impact could the legal dispute have on future rights negotiations, fans, and pricing?

Episode Transcript

(00:11):
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the next episode of
Stream Time Sports. My name is Kristen.
I'm the community lead joined asalways by our CEO, Nick Meacham.
Now Nick, due to my holidays, we've been talking about the
Caribbean quite a bit. We could rename the podcast, the
Gulfstream podcast. But I do think it is worth, you
know, talking to the our audience a little bit.
You know, we were a little concerned you might not be able
to record this episode. So maybe tell us a little bit.

(00:33):
And I didn't even ask in our prerecording meeting about it
because I wanted to hear it first time.
Have you been, you know, did youclearly hear you survived?
So it's not been end of days, but you know, tell us about it.
It's been a interesting couple of weeks.
You know, we were on holiday with a few friends that came
over from London to visit us over one of the nice resorts in

(00:55):
the other side of the of the country.
And we started to hear murmurs that there was this hurricane
building way out in the Caribbean on the other side,
like not really anywhere near us.
And that was it. There was a bit of a murmur that
was this building and, and nothing really to worry about at
this stage. And then all of a sudden a
couple of days later, which is only a week ago now, we heard,

(01:16):
oh, this, this hurricane is now actually growing in size where
normally it starts to Peter out and it's growing at the fastest
rate in history. And actually normally it tracks
quite vertically, quite NN up towards US is typically the the,
the trajectory. This has gone right across and
it's taking a completely different path.
Oh, OK. That sounds like that sounds

(01:39):
like a bit of a problem, not really knowing what to expect
from that. And the more we talk to locals,
the more we understood that thisdoesn't happen very often, that
there is a hurricane season to be aware of.
And it's a good 5-6 months of the year is when they're likely
to happen. But nothing like this has really
happened almost before with the alarm bells, the scale and

(02:01):
never, it's never happened at this scale this time of year.
So, yeah, it's serious. And if it does keep tracking the
way it does. And that's the thing, it's, it's
an if question quite a lot rightuntil the last couple of days
because it can change course, itcan die out.
And, and so we're all getting a bit confused as to what to
expect. And then everything went into
like hyperdrive. So everyone was hitting the

(02:23):
shops with buying things to survive if the water was out, if
food wasn't available, if electricity was out, because if
it does, worst case does hit andhits hard, then electricity
could be out for weeks. I heard one story from some of
the last time it had. Granted this was 30-40 years ago
that they were out for two months now they lived in the,
they lived in the village and they lived out of out of the

(02:44):
centre of town. But that's the scale of what can
happen in a, in a developing country if one of these, these
hurricanes hits the way it could.
So we started getting a lot morefear, a lot more anxious as to
what could happen, as did everyone else.
We talked to Jamaicans, we talked to a lot of the locals
and they're all giving us similar alarm bells.
And actually they were building more fear for us because they're

(03:05):
like, look, this is not, this islooking really serious.
So yeah, basically I had to go do a big shop, buy gallons and
gallons or litres of water, hundreds of dollars of crackers
and biscuits and dry food, basically in tin food to be
ready just in case we were out of power for so long.
And when it came to crunch time,it was quite surreal.
You know, we're talking and everyone we had was the same

(03:28):
sort of feel. There's this anxious about it's
coming, it's coming. And what happens in apparently
it's quite normal is when a hurricane's coming, it takes the
moisture starts to take the moisture out of the air.
So the, the, the country or the destination it's about to hit
gets a lot hotter. And it actually is quite it's
not as windy, it's quite calm. So it's kind of like it's a

(03:49):
cliche calm before the storm is literally what was happening
over that period. So for us it was it was getting
all very weird. And we have a lot of friends who
are both locals and non locals and we're like everyone sort of
messaging each other going what's going to happen?
How bad is it? And even on the day that it was
due to hit, they're still not weren't really clear how bad it
was going to be. And so there was a lot of
anxiety, a lot of stress, a lot of fear.

(04:12):
Unfortunately, Kingston didn't get hit nearly as hard as some
of the other western southwestern cities and regions
that got really decimated by by the hurricane.
You know, we had I think 70 milewinds or so forth, which is,
which is crazy, but pretty calm compared to some of the other
parts of the island that got absolutely destroyed.

(04:32):
We had a lot of trees down. We lost power, but luckily we
have a generator at the complex we live in.
So that was lucky because otherwise we would have been out
of power for nearly a week. And yeah, just the anxiousness
was almost worse than the actualday itself in the end because we
got off pretty lightly. So anxious for the kids,
anxious, anxious for us, actually anxious for our
friends. So now that it's done, we've got

(04:52):
our first one under our belt. We can breathe a little bit
easier now and then We know knowwhat to what to do at least and
what to expect if those things come.
Then I've got about 20-4 litres of water sitting in my basement
if I need to pull it out for thenext one.
Apparently this is going to be ahot hurricane year, which is
really exciting to to learn as you kick off the the hurricane
season. So yeah, it's been a been a

(05:14):
whirlwind couple of weeks. But yeah, we're all, we're all
good here, that's for sure. Well, Nick, as you talked about
all that, you didn't mention theanxiety about content never
sleeps. And what will we have done?
Sure, we would have found a way,but I know that was causing you
more anxiety than anything else.Oh man, I was like, how do I get
to my laptop quickly and how canI push out another piece of
content? You know, content never sleeps.
Is is always at the front of my mind and so very keen and glad

(05:37):
that we could get this podcast recorded because otherwise I, I
would have lost even countless more night sleep more than that
hurricane itself because I knew that the podcast would have been
a day late. But glad we're here.
Glad we're keeping business as usual and on with the show.
Well, one thing I do have to askbecause you you talked about
losing power for a little bit. I don't know if it occurred over
the 4th of July holidays, but you know, one of my favorite

(06:01):
sporting events, which again, wetalk about events that aren't
getting picked up in the UK and around the globe.
And I don't know why, was the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating
competition, which shockingly this year, superstar Joey
Chestnut was banned because he has a sponsorship with a vegan
hot dog company. So there's a new champion.
So, I mean, Nick, I mean, were you able to tune into that
'cause, you know, we talked about in the office, you know,

(06:22):
Josh SIM, one of our editorial crew about downloading AVPN so
we could get ESPN Plus to watch it.
But it is a real shame that thatis not covered outside of the
United States of America. It's a travesty.
We I did see coverage of it. It was really weird because it
was on, I think it was on the ESPN Caribbean that I saw some
coverage and but they didn't really talk about the
controversy. They kind of just showed him

(06:43):
doing a competition somewhere else.
And then the other competition with that I think was a huge,
massive dude that that won. No, it was a that was a drinking
contest. He drank like a four.
Gallon aid, Yeah. Yeah, that was go onto YouTube
or go onto social media and findthat clip.
And then what's the after clip? Where have you seen that, where
he's getting all the accolades and there's someone just

(07:05):
throwing up next to him and he'slike, tap him on the back and go
off you go. This is my moment.
And they're still walking away throwing up after drinking 4
litres of of lemonade and he's just basking in the glory as
calm as you like. Maybe that's quite common.
I'm sure it's quite common in these sort of eating contests.
But no, it definitely wasn't thesame.
But those those contests just baffle me.
I can't imagine what they're putting them, their bodies

(07:27):
through. But wasn't it that he's just not
the winner? The, what's his name?
Joey basically was just saying that you just got to keep
eating. That's the training is you just
got to keep eating and keep eating and that's the training
you got to do to make sure you can stomach it as well as
possible. I don't want to tell you how
many documentaries I've watched on it, not actually that many,

(07:47):
but Kobayashi, who supposedly Joey's going to have a spin off
with on Netflix, talked about exclusively for training.
They just eat lettuce. And the reason they just eat
lettuce is because it's almost entirely water.
So as you eat it, it actually expands your stomach.
So in terms of training, lettuceis the best thing to eat, which
obviously sounds wild because you think of these people as

(08:08):
being gluttonous. And I'm sure you can still be
gluttonous by eating just lettuce, but apparently that's
like one of their go to trainingthings because of its water
composition. That's that is a fascinating.
I never would have thought that given what the bread and grease
that they're typically eating inthese competitions, I thought it
might be celery because, you know, isn't the the saying that
the celery you burn more calories than you can?

(08:29):
Chew in. Yeah, so I thought maybe that
was the case. They could just, they
relentlessly and endlessly eat celery all day long, all night
long, just to keep keep themselves in shape.
But because sometimes you see some of these guys and they're
huge and others are like they look like skin and bones.
They must be running marathons between each between each course
to keep all those calories off. So that's a competition at

(08:51):
heart. I mean, that's the thing.
Those things that are happening every week, you wouldn't watch
them. But those like we talked about
last week, right? Those events moments once a year
you're going to tune into something like that.
It's just a sight to behold in in in good ways and in bad.
Absolutely. I couldn't let it go by without
mentioning it before jumping into the real content today,
which will go from one major competition, you know, that

(09:13):
takes place once a year and the Nathan's hot dog getting
competition to a four year eventand primarily the World Cup and
the, you know, body that organizes that being FIFA.
Now back in April 2022, FIFA launched FIFA plus, which was a
free ad supported streaming service.
You can be accessed on the web on your mobile devices.

(09:33):
They eventually set up five different fast channels.
They've got smart TV apps on allthe relatively well knowns, you
know, your, your Rakutians, yourSamsung's, your LG's, your
Roku's and they were really ambitious, Nick.
They wanted something to like 40,000 live matches a year that
included 11,000 women's matches.They were looking for some

(09:55):
pretty tasty size numbers in terms of what they were looking
to do with monthly users. They were going to put on all
sorts of archival content, I think dating back to the World
Cup in the 1950s. They were going to keep adding
videos to that. They were going to do, you know,
localized talk shows. They had different original
content with Ronaldinho. And it was this really big push

(10:19):
to have this streaming digital platform.
And it also worked out timing wise because they had the two
World Cups coming up with the men's World Cup and the women's
World Cup. And I think one of the other
things that's really interestingis I do think it feeds into
this, although it's a slightly different note, was within a
month of that, they also ended their relationship with EA
Sports and the the famous FIFA video game where they'd had a

(10:40):
relationship for three decades. And basically, you know,
President Gianni Infantino basically said, you know, FIFA
Plus is going to be the home with the best digital experience
in sports when it comes to soccer.
And that included the video content and included the video
gaming, everything that took place.
This FIFA Plus platform is goingto be the greatest thing since
sliced bread. So they were very, very bold and

(11:02):
ambitious about it. Now, we've got some recent news
saying, you know, they're looking for a further $2 billion
in investment, and we'll get into that a little bit later
because that's really the news that came up.
But Nick, in terms of the FIFA Plus platform that they were
building, you know, looking backat it, what was the real reason
for going out and doing something like this 'cause
they're obviously getting lots of broadcast money for their

(11:25):
events, but what was the need togo out and create this streaming
platform, this direct to consumer platform?
Well, one of the one of the mainreasons I had to go out and make
this was that all the the matches that happened under the
FIFA banner, all the qualifying matches actually were largely
unavailable. You think about there's 200
national associations or whatever the number is these

(11:46):
days that they count within the FIFA family, a lot of those
matches just aren't available ormade available because there's
no means to do it. You know, there's some very
small markets that they don't have, if they, they will be too
small to even bother having a local broadcasting deal, let
alone make it available internationally.
So there's so there was a lot ofcontent just not being made

(12:07):
available to audiences internationally.
And then you think there's different plays there of say
expat communities who maybe don't live in markets, for
example, In my own experience, even just this past week in
watching the EUR, I had to work my tail off to try and find
access to the England, Switzerland game because it was
normally most of those matches were being played on the the
local freeware provider or the local, I think it's the local

(12:31):
freeware provider or on the OTT service that's out here for, for
soccer. But I couldn't get access to it.
I tried. I couldn't even just I couldn't
even find a way onto it. The only way you could get it is
basically via AVPN if you want to get, get online with through
BBC. So, but that's an example of
like, OK, I'm no, that's a quoteUN quote expat living in other

(12:51):
country. Want to watch and my, my, my
nation. I put mine in inverted commas,
but I'll wear the English badge proudly, especially my son who
wears it was he was very, very keen to watch the match.
I'll interject real quickly, Nick.
At one point on Saturday when they were playing Switzerland, I
said the word us in reference toEngland.

(13:12):
And I think that's the first time I've ever done that in the
nine years since I moved back. And I instantly felt dirty.
So I get what you're saying whenyou said you used it in
quotations, because I don't. But I root for England.
That was the first time I ever said like we or us.
And I just, I caught myself and I was like, whoa, I don't know
what just happened here. Well, I have to watch myself

(13:32):
actually, because one time I was, I was, you know, there's
obviously this quintessential competition rivalry between
Australia and England and, and alot of in a lot of sporting
contests. And so when I was trying to
explain to my son why I root forother teams against England,
sometimes that got really got really sad.
So now I'm trying to be a littlebit more positive on the
positive side of supporting England when I can and be very

(13:55):
clear about my intent versus doing it reticently.
But anyway, my, my point is thatthat's a great example of it
doesn't have to be even an expat, right?
You'd just be I want to watch some of the qualifying matches.
There's a burning interest for some reason to watch a game and
that was just not made available.
So what FIFA had to do in those instances, they said, well, all

(14:16):
of this content has to be available somewhere for people
to watch. We need a resource to to make it
available. And what better way to do it
than have a global platform for all of that to be housed in.
What had to go then go and happen was FIFA then had to
basically do contracts like basically stop various forms of
like rights deals with a lot of the home nations to make that

(14:38):
content available internationally because they
still you still have to have a contract in place.
You can't just take those rightswithout some sort of contractual
obligation. So that was the that was like
the core reason why this platform needed to exist.
The second one is obviously a new potential revenue stream, a
new engagement tool to get people more connected with
football. 365 for FIFA from the business perspective, to have

(15:01):
more of a platform to engage audiences and and understand
more of it. It's consumer base which can
better help service their sponsorship deals that they had,
which is huge global partnerships and be more visible
and available. 365 between thosemajor events, which we've talked
about a little bit about the Olympic Channel trying to do the
same. So all those things make a lot
of sense and also telling the stories of some of the major

(15:24):
teams that are athletes, the thestakeholders that, but that FIFA
could take a bit of the ownership of that and do it
through this platform. So it makes a lot of sense to
have a platform like they have. And I think it follows over
similar playbooks that a lot of the international federations
have tried to follow. The difference is a simple one.
And the difference is that FIFA then put a huge exorbitant

(15:47):
revenue target and eyeballs target alongside that approach,
yet weren't hosting almost any premium content on the platform.
I think they might have done a few select initiatives and maybe
markets like I think I have Brazil in my mind where they
might have broadcast some of thecontent in Brazil, But I think

(16:07):
that was maybe on a non exclusive basis with the
Brazilian influencer who had some rights as well.
But they they put some of the more premium content available
in some markets very, very lightly, but not enough to move
the needle commercially, not enough to drive billions of
revenue, which is they were going out there and saying they
would. And so that's that's a
predicament I think everyone's trying to get their head around
is like, like with this with anysports property, what's your

(16:30):
objective here versus what are you trying to what, what's the
objective? And is it realistic,
particularly on the commercial front, is it realistic to create
a platform that is there to serve as an underserved audience
to make sure all content and allmatches are available at any
time? Yes, that's great.
But is it going to be a massive revenue driver in through the
direct channel itself? We have not seen many examples

(16:54):
where that can really reign trueyet or it's going to take a long
time to build. So no surprise that the FIFA
have had a few challenges in hitting some of those commercial
goals they set. Now they did, I think, actually
start off a little bit of a minibang because like I said, they
had the World Cups sort of back-to-back.
Now, as you mentioned, I think one of the questions I had was
how do you attract people to theplatform?
It's similar to, you know, we'veseen things in the Premier

(17:16):
League like whether it's MUTV orSpurs play, you know, what are
fans actually really willing to pay for?
You know, are they willing to pay for the platform to watch
some behind the scenes and some player interviews?
And then you're basically relying on the lower tier
content like the under nineteensand stuff like that.
There's kind of the World Cup orthe FIFA plus proposition,
right, where you weren't going to get the actual World Cup

(17:37):
games themselves. Was there enough to keep people
coming in for that? But I guess one of the things I
at least appreciate about Nick is they didn't try to put a
subscription to it. They were going to go with that
AD model. So it did feel at least to, to
some degree, it was a little bitmore realistic.
But the World Cup at least gave them an initial really big boost
to start off with in terms of, if nothing else, if it was just

(17:58):
about getting people to sign up and start collecting some data,
they at least started off with abang.
But I think what my concern was long term started to come
around, which was what do you donow?
I don't know what's keeping people to stick in that
ecosystem. Yeah.
And the question is, I think thefundamental question sports has
struggled with. Yeah, we talked about the events
economy a little bit last week. Again, we talked about this

(18:21):
before on the hot dog eating competition, right?
Do you need fans and consumers to actually come back to your
platform? Does that actually need to
happen in between those events or you're actually dissipating
the engagement of when those moments do actually happen?
And by dissipating the engagement, dissipating the
value on an ongoing basis, does that really sort of almost take

(18:43):
the air out of when you do have a danger event moment to come,
that air all eyes aren't on yourplatform because they've been
coming and going and it's not really been providing the value
it needs. I think it's just a tricky a
conundrum for the industry to work at how much engagement
through the year is enough versus just picking on those 10
pole moments, those major eventsmoments.
And I agree with you. I think FIFA's approach on being

(19:06):
very open and advertising LED intheir commercial model, you,
you're seeing more of that now across the industry.
We see that by putting gating orpaywalls on content, it really
does stop the casual consumer tocome to the platform to watch.
So taking the advertising that approach makes a truckload of

(19:27):
sense. I did go on their platform just
before and this is where it getsreally interesting.
When you take an advertising approach, right is they are
typically using either various forms of programmatic
advertising to drive revenue andcurrently the number was they
had my data. Once you press accept cookies,
your data was being sent to around 800 and 42 ad or ad

(19:50):
partners or vendors. So that just is one of these
things to be aware of is you know, when you start playing
this game of opening up the doors, you your data is still
being used and commercialized inanother way.
But that's what every media outlet does.
So that's not like oh, FIFA's doing it the wrong way.
FIFA's do is following the conventional model that all ad

(20:11):
funded businesses follow. So this is not a hate game on
FIFA here. This is just.
How the game works. But yeah, I think the
advertising model has is the right approach.
Still, it brings down the barriers.
But again, the objective, can they drive enough meaningful
revenue out of this space while we're still not seeing enough
meaningful investment in, let's face it, a more niche service

(20:33):
from major ad buyers than you would in other places?
I've not heard or seen any revenue numbers brought
unpublished with regards to FIFAPlus, and I don't think you
will. And that's one of the reasons
they've probably come out and said they want to get more
investment into this platform, because the numbers aren't
shaping up the way they somehow expected them to shape up.
Well, before we go into the investment side of things, just

(20:54):
still looking at sort of the current platform and the
original strategy that was laid out for it.
You know, one of the things that, you know, I thought could
have potentially been interesting is, you know,
football's obviously a global sport.
I thought one of the interestingthings we've seen with, say, the
NBA was they sort of embedded themselves within the what is it
the courtside? Oh my gosh, what was the year

(21:14):
Nick did basketball started the product that our friends at
Feeble put together. Courtside 1981 18911891 Yeah, I
went to dyslexia for a second. Yeah, like I liked how they
embedded that within the platform, right.
I thought it was a nice touch todo that.
It's sort of how we've spoken tothe UFC where the UF CS bought
other or, you know, negotiated with other mixed martial arts to

(21:38):
exist within the platform. Like it could have been
interesting. Just could the FIFA plus
platform become a place to how some of this other stuff in a
non exclusive manner where you know it, it could have been an
aggregator of sorts. Like I always thought that was
interesting or potentially, you know, I remember I think Andreas
Hayden wouldn't have been the first person to say.
He's just the first person I personally heard say it.
You know, these directors, consumer platforms could be a

(22:00):
negotiation tool. And you know, there's been some
rumors about FIFA talking about with their Club World
Championship that they've been negotiating with Apple and
they've sort of said if we don'tget the the offer we want, we'll
just host it on our FIFA plus platform.
Now whether that would end up making more money through
eyeballs and advertisement than what's selling with a
broadcaster, there's that side of it as well.
So, you know, do you think any of that is still possible or do

(22:24):
you know that has any merit to it or those sorts of things we
just kind of say to be a bit, I don't know, optimistic?
Well, I, I think we often in theindustry have been to one or the
other. You either do an A hard paywall
model, you sell all your rights or you make it all free.
And I do think you can definitely take a blended

(22:46):
approach, whether it's they lookat market by market, what do
they need to look at market by market or just have OK, certain
games, local games will be available live in those markets
and everything else is availablethrough FIFA.
And try and have a more expansive and more obvious and
clear offering for consumers to understand.
You go to FIFA Plus if you want to watch X, yeah, you want to
watch matches of interest that are not your country playing in.

(23:08):
OK, They're available here. How can they drive the revenue
to make it worthwhile? Well, that is still the question
we've had in a couple of pods recently.
It comes up, it's coming up all the time now is the role of
advertising in this industry. And the premiums are still very
difficult to manage as to you'restill seeing a lot of the
industry having to do independent advertising deals
rather than just relying on a proper programmatic advertising

(23:31):
service to drive enough value. But it's getting better and
better and better. And so sometimes you can manage
advertising yourself. That was the case of when we had
transmit on the podcast a few weeks back, which seemed to
piqued a lot of people's interest is you have it
available to manage yourself if you want to, but you can also
use external tools to help you sell those those those assets as

(23:55):
well. And I think you're going to
going to see more of this continue to develop where in the
same way in social media, advertisers to begin with just
started spending a lot of money on retargeting and remarketing
through social channels on like look alike audiences.
Then you saw influencer marketing become more and more
prevalent and more interesting because we started targeting

(24:17):
micro communities that were relevant to their audiences with
higher engagement. And I think there's something
similar happening here with whatsports can play in terms of
providing something of more value to a targeted audience set
with live being a hyper engaged product versus non live.
So like your YouTube content, the the the social media
channels that don't have the same connectivity, the same

(24:40):
attention that non live has, live is still the pinnacle
there. So yeah, I, I do like their
approach. I think the advertising way is
the way to go, but it's still a lot further from maturity than I
think FIFA or anyone else wants in this industry to see that OK,
if you are serving thousands of concurrents on here, you're
going to monetize that proportionately to what audience
you are serving there based on the amount of eyeballs.

(25:02):
No matter what time you're creating.
It's still very under mature that whole that whole
marketplace right now. So now shifting gears because we
we've alluded to it a little bit, but it's time talking about
the recent news, which is FIFA'snow looking to raise $2 billion
in investment. You know, primarily looking at
US sources or trying to continueto milk the cash cow that is the

(25:24):
Middle East that seemingly is willing to throw a lot of money
into sports at the moment. And they're offering up to a
minority stake in the platform. It almost reminds me a little
bit of Barcelona pulling all their levers with, you know,
Barsa Media and trying to raise money at the expense of
potential future profits there. So, Nick, with them coming out

(25:44):
and saying we're looking for a further $2 billion, is that, do
you indicate that they're, they're not hitting some of the
marks that they were looking foror is this something you think
was always going to happen kind of regardless of the situation?
No, I. Don't think it was going to
happen unless there were challenges being faced and I

(26:04):
know what the external perception is.
I'm not in FIFA to understand what the conversations are from
outside in what it looks like and constantly looks like.
This is is a bit of naivety as to what some of these numbers
are actually able to do. We talked about it like last
week with regards to the Women'sWorld Cup and how Gianni
Infantino was coming out and saying that he thought it was
worth X and no one's bidding forit.

(26:26):
Well, that's the the state of media rights is your rights are
only worth as much as the value that people are willing to pay
for them. And in this instance, telling
people that they should pay morejust because isn't really isn't
really strong enough. And I think he is saying this is
probably this platform is going to generate X amount of revenue.
And those contracts I mentioned before from what I understood,

(26:47):
the ones that with all the different national associations,
part of the carrot there for them to sort of hand over those
rights is that they will start getting revenue share once
revenue starts being created through advertising.
So there's an incentive of giving off those rights.
They weren't making money anywayto start handing off more non
key rights to FIFA. So you might be able to generate
more revenue from this advertising machine that they're

(27:09):
hoping to create. So no, it it, it's not
surprising that it hasn't potentially worked, although
it's the reason they are now looking for extra investment.
And when we hear FIFA talk aboutnumbers in public, they
typically only talk in the billions.
They never talk about anything in between.
So the only way a couple of billion is going to be
worthwhile putting into this platform after it's been built.
And everything I hear and see isa platform that's a really solid

(27:32):
product. There's been a good team who
have built this product and proposition and approach.
It is well regarded, well respected as a, as a proposition
of product itself. But to try and generate 2
billion. The only things logically that I
can think of why you would do that, I want is they want to
take a leap of faith in having more premium rights on the

(27:52):
platform and not selling them on.
So maybe there's an underwritingof, of, of that and that cost to
the fee for organization, the fee for money making machine and
how that money is going to be distributed.
A part of it could be that they need to they, they believe they
need to shift the product to a anew tech stack already.
I've not heard any rumours as towhy that would be the case, but

(28:15):
it could be. But that's not going to cost
billions. Or it could be that they want to
go all in on marketing and trying to sell the product more,
more widely. But again, that doesn't make a
lot of sense. Or it could be a bit of all
three, but to just sell a portion of the assets to this.
It's like with these other dealsyou've seen, you talked about
before or we've seen La La Liga,we're selling a proportion of
their media rights revenue couldjust get some cash now to to

(28:36):
spend on investment. FIFA doesn't need just some cash
to spend typically a, a FIFA as an organization.
But I know what will be happening in an organization
like that and be there'll be a lot of pressures from all
stakeholders saying, hey, you promised us that we'd start
generating revenue from a platform like this and it's not
generating the income. So what are you going to do
about it? How are we going to resolve

(28:58):
this? And this might be a way to go
get that, that cash injection tojustify the decision at the time
that was made and maybe make some further investments into
marketing and driving more valueand more return.
But I'm never a fan of just selling, selling, you know,
sports, probably selling. It's it's not, it's all, but

(29:19):
it's like it's commercial rightsfor a short period of time
anyway, just for an immediate return, particularly if they're
already a money making machine like like FIFA R Normally
there's something politically involved would be my guess.
Well, you sort of answered my next question, which is what are
you going to do with $2 billion?Because as you said, it's not a
small sum of money and it's not like the platform should be
outdated from a tech perspective.

(29:39):
So where does that 2 billion go?Because anything that's
infrastructure wise isn't reallykind of a drop in the bucket
sort of thing. So you can either elaborate on
that, Nick, you can give me a wink if you want to.
Yeah, you you got something elseto add to.
That, well, I'll give it a go. To expand a bit further, I would
say that you could easily throw a huge amount, I'm talking like
9 figures into heavy marketing of the product if you wanted to,

(30:03):
if you thought you could generate some significant
returns by building an ongoing audience or you wanted to.
You talked about the fact that FIFA talked about this FIFA Plus
as a destination, right? You know, fantasy sports being
wrapped into it. Maybe there's some other layers
of this they could add to who knows, they could look at
creating a gaming proposition akin to I know they've been
talked about that they're going to launch a new game with

(30:24):
partners, not EA Sports, but PESPro Evolution Soccer, I think
was the the partner, but imaginethat being part of the platform.
So you're creating this ongoing destination that FIFA is having
that you have availability and more connectivity with
audiences. So I could see them spending
money, some pretty major money in, you know, maybe it's it's an
investment into a new game, maybe it's investment into

(30:44):
marketing, maybe it's an investment into again, redoing
the platform. Quite often you do find in the
business, generally when you build a technology platform that
it's not all it's cracked up to be.
You might have missed some things.
You have to have, it's easy to miss things in the original
build that, oh, we need more flexibility in this.
We need the capability of plugging this into the system

(31:05):
and we need to make sure it's more cloud based and we need to
make sure it's more dynamic and how it's set up in the
infrastructure. The really boring part of it, I
guess the non business part, that can be a huge investment if
it's going to unlock more commercial opportunities.
So I could see a bunch of reasons why they might need to
take a reset to the approach. Is that worth 2 billion?
No, no, it's definitely not worth 2 billion.

(31:28):
Could it be that actually it's only reports, right.
So it could be that maybe the investment they're looking for
is to the valuing the product of2 billion.
And actually it's only a percentage of those of that
number potentially. But my guess it is to underwrite
some of the underperformance financially of that platform
versus what was what was sold orwas presented to the

(31:51):
stakeholders in FIFA. And that's the that is probably
the major reason, I guess that this would be the case.
I can't really see the other wayother than bringing more rights
into the platform and underwriting that that loss to
FIFA, which would be a very interesting move.
It'd be a very shrewd move. You know, the Club World Cup is
something you mentioned before. There could be other sets of
rights that might say, hey, you know what, well, we're actually

(32:11):
going to double down this. We're just going to underwrite
it with this investment and we're going to shift audiences
to our platform rather than follow the follow the
convention, follow wisdom of selling the core rights to free
to air providers. So it's hard to make sense of it
to be honest. Well, that pride doesn't leave
me overly optimistic for my lastquestion on this, which is they
say they get the money they're looking for in terms of their

(32:33):
investment. Other than the really obvious
answer, which is make more money, get more people on the
platform, what do they need to do to, to turn this around to
potentially hit some of the, thenumbers they were looking to do?
Like what is success going to look like?
Because clearly whatever they originally set out for, they're
not hitting that. You know how How do they make

(32:54):
this investment worthwhile? Tricky question.
I would say a couple of things. So one that trying to look for
the playbook of the IOC and withthe Olympic channel what they
tried to do. So what they tried to do is
create a platform that provided a really significant new asset
to its top partners to sponsor to spend more money on as an

(33:15):
activation of their partnership.So can they create new shows,
new series, new propositions, orjust new advertising channels
that they can provide their top partners to increase their spend
and value as being a key partnerof FIFA?
Or can they generate sort of a new tier of partnership at the

(33:37):
global level that allows them tobring on a new array of partners
that they can possibly build a relationship and then get them
interested in investing at the bigger level.
And so their digital asset provides them a new way of
unlocking more potential suitorsto work with FIFA in the years
to come in different ways and not just on the FIFA Plus
proposition. The other part is just generally

(33:58):
we are, we talked about it againa couple of weeks ago when I
mentioned that part before is keep investing in making sure
the the infrastructure is reallyrobust so they can maximise
every dollar possible through programmatic advertising and
really hammer home in the same way your experience and going to
a YouTube or other social media platforms might be filled with

(34:18):
ads these days. That's a way to make sure that
they're generating as much income as possible and that's
really the only couple of areas I can see that they can drive
enough meaningful financial return.
They might need to again, hammering this point a bit to
bring some more premium rights into the platform to create the

(34:39):
destination advertisers are looking for to try and make it
worthwhile to become a more major investor with FIFA rather
than just plugging in their advertising budgets into the
traditional channels they're using.
So if they do some of those things, then I could see a world
where you could definitely see an increase in income from
advertisers and and fundamentally sponsors and

(35:01):
commercial partners of FIFA to fund and generate more revenue.
Do I see it of a sudden overcoming this huge price tag
that'll be on its head to generate return for whoever does
invest into it? That's a whole other question.
Well, it's interesting. I actually love that idea.
I think if they were going to dosomething with it, that makes a
ton of sense. And we're going to talk about

(35:22):
the NFL next. And I think about what the NFL
has done with NFL Media, the waythat's just, you know, it is
quite literally its own separatebusiness, but it is part of the
umbrella. You know, football at the end of
the day, soccer is the world game.
I mean, you could do so many different localized shows.
You know, there's different competitions going on.
Like yes, the Euros are part of UEFA, but there's no recent FIFA
couldn't talk about that. You got Copa America.

(35:44):
You know that there's certainly a lot of ways if you went full
blown investment into setting upin a media hub, you know,
despite the fact you only have your major competition really
that you're selling every four years.
So there's a lot of stuff to talk about in the meanwhile,
even if it's not directly associated with FIFA, because
those players will still be in your competition sort of
guerrilla marketing a little bit.

(36:06):
So yeah, that that that makes a ton of sense when you describe
it that way. Yeah, look to further to lean on
to what you've described there is think about the success of
box to box and drive to survive in all those shows.
But you've got a fully focused football machine.
If this investment thermal opportunity was actually more
about the content creation and less about the platform being

(36:29):
commercialized and more of a full 360 these NFL media style
approach. But for FIFA and leaning into
documentaries and content that would truly have global appeal
but also can have regional appeal, you know, you could do
content that is just targeted tothe Australasian market and
would be one of the highest consumed documentary series in

(36:50):
the country when it's launched. If you did something around the
the the road to when they made it back after 20, I think it was
like 24 years out of being the out of the World Cup, they made
it back. It was such a moment in
Australian sporting history whenthat happened.
I remember running around the streets crazily excited at about
6:00 in the morning after after that happened and and that was

(37:10):
something that just took the nation by storm.
So there's these stories that you could really tell that are
targeted to regions to countries.
If you have this really powerfulstorytelling machine in in house
that is going to try and tell stories like a box to box would
tell. And you know, there's going to
be a marketplace for that. They've got the athlete stories,
the team stories, and they all do so well on these global

(37:33):
platforms, but take it more regional.
And there you've got something interesting where you can then
monetize it not only through your own channels, but then
selling to all the major platforms out there and becoming
a proper media machine. So I think the NFL media
example's a great one. Yeah, that's why the NFL started
partnering up with, I think it'sSkydance, if I remember
correctly. And that's one of the reasons
they wanted to becoming a more of a content machine to tell

(37:55):
those stories. I, I, I love the idea of FIFA
trying to make that play. I haven't seen the reports that
this is connected with that. But if that was and it's about
creating a proper stand alone content engine that is going to
transform the storytelling of football in the world, both
regionally, domestically and internationally, then now you've
got something I think that is really compelling.

(38:15):
You heard it here first. FIFA.
Hire us. We'll, we'll, we'll solve
everything with that. Just give us a $2 billion budget
and we'll make it work. Absolutely.
Give me an extra few zeros on mycurrent budget and I will make
it work for you, no? Probably so we we teased it a
little bit, but we'll finish up talking about the NFL now.
One of the things that came out over the last week or so was the

(38:36):
ongoing civil, not civil lawsuit.
Sorry, anti Oh my God, class action lawsuit.
Nick, I don't know what's going on with my brain right now.
It's still Monday, but the classaction lawsuit quite substantial
at the moment. They've been ordered to pay
almost just under four or actually I think it is bang on,
$4.7 billion in damages. 4.61 billion of that is going to

(38:58):
residential subscribers with 96,000,000 for commercial
establishments, your bars, your restaurants and things like
that. Now this case, as far as I'm
aware, it was originally filed in 2015, was originally
dismissed and then reinstated on2017.
So the fact that we're just getting, you know, an initial
answer in 2024 lets you know that this has been going on for

(39:19):
quite some time now. What this goes with is the NFL
Sunday Ticket. Now this used to be exclusively
held by DIRECTV. I'm going back as far as 1994.
So we're looking at almost nearly a 30 year relationship
before we know YouTube took it over and put it on YouTube TV.
Now part of the reason this is abit of a controversy is they

(39:39):
believe that there was some illegal anti competition
practices with the NFL basicallyworking behind the scenes with
DIRECTV to keep prices inflated.It was also some issues with the
fact that for those that aren't aware aren't American DIRECTV is
a satellite provider. So in order to actually get NFL
Sunday Ticket, if you had cable or something else, you would

(39:59):
have to completely change your TV provider to get NFL Sunday
Ticket. So this has gone through, like I
said, it's been something that'sbeen brewing for nearly a decade
now. At this point, the NFL is going
to appeal. To to get it overturned.
And I actually read that if theylose, the fine can actually be
tripled and go up to $12 billion.
So I'd have to think the NF LS pretty confident that they're

(40:22):
going to win this appeal becauselike 4 billion is already a just
shy of $5 billion is a pretty hefty fine.
Nick, I wouldn't you know, triple that to 15 billion if I
wasn't really confident I was going to win it.
But it is nonetheless, I think just a really interesting story
because I don't think we've heard of at least any other
major sports, right, losing a class action lawsuit of this

(40:44):
scale, what as it relates to a media deal?
No, I think it's absolutely unprecedented.
I do, I haven't seen enough of the findings to understand how
they can come to such a significant decision.
You know, for me then I know, I know there's regulations and
laws in place in different markets and particularly in US
where media, media contracts areas thick and as deep and as long

(41:09):
as they could be anywhere in theworld.
But to, if my view is if they want to sell the rights to
someone, then why can't they sell it at those rights?
And then it's up to the platform.
If they want to sell it at a certain price that might be
inflated. The risk is you might not get
people buying it. They might turn away.
There is a, there is a tipping point.
I mean, it's a classic economicsquestion.
I remember studying economics atuniversity and they do this,

(41:32):
they talk about elastic and inelastic demand.
And then, but at some point it can you can break the model if
you've got something that a market truly needs.
They use normally use fuel or petrol where used to be the
example at but at some point, ifprices get too high, eventually
you'll go another direction and eventually you'll find something
else to entertain you other thanthe NFL in this instance.

(41:52):
So from my view is that that is it the hands of the beholder of
who it's just content. It's it's someone selling their
rights to another player. Now I know that's not as simple
as that, but it is quite extraordinary to think that
there's some limitations on it to the extent that might cost an
organization billions and billions of dollars.
And I've always found the Sundayticket concept just a bit

(42:13):
bizarre, particularly having to subscribe via satellite.
It was always a bit confusing tome.
But again, legacy, it's been been like that for quite a long
time. Never really paid it a lot of
attention. And now we flip it.
We've gone, we've gone full 180 now and we now we've got YouTube
on YouTube TV. Anyone can basically access it
on any, any remote smart platform of its choice.

(42:34):
It goes completely bucks againstthe trend of what DIRECTV had
been building for so long. So I don't really quite
understand how we got here, how the decision was made.
Typically this from when I've seen major deals or major legal
issues pop up like this in sports, normally you see them

(42:54):
downsized. There's in a settlement
somewhere along the line, although what I would love to
see is if it does go through at this level is how all the
consumers are going to get paid.You know, like every one of all
these decades being who've been mistreated.
They just send in, apply for a check.
How how's that money distributedto people who win when their

(43:15):
class action lawsuit is scale? So anyway, that's just an
anecdotal question mark for me, but I find it all very, very
bizarre and interesting to see what happens, see if it does
stick, or whether they find a way they settle or get it
dismissed altogether. Well, I've got the numbers in
front of me, Nick. The case apparently covers 2.4
million residential subscribers and 48,000 separate commercial
businesses that purchased the package from 2011 to 2022.

(43:40):
So as you say, Nick, I don't know who from an admin
perspective is going to be responsible for sending out all
of those different checks. And I would presume if you were
a subscriber for all eleven of those years, only two or three
of those years, surely you're not going to get the same
payment. I wouldn't think so.
But yeah, Nick, that in itself seems like an absolute
logistical had been nightmare tohave to figure all that out.

(44:03):
But I think one of the things I read, Nick, was, you know, they
talked about supposedly ESPN wasinterested in purchasing the
product, but they were going to sell it at like $70.00 a year as
opposed to the $350.00 a year. And that was evidence of some
sort of alleged price fixing because they knew DIRECTV was

(44:23):
going to have it there and they wouldn't allow ESPN to have it
because it was at a lower price.Which I come back to your point,
Nick, as far as I'm concerned, if I look at a different
example, the Premier League doesn't care what Sky Sports
sells it for. Once Sky Sports is paid for it.
It's not really the Premier League's problem.
And I, I have a similar thought with the NFL.
Does the NFL, what benefit does the NFL have to what price it

(44:45):
comes out in on the back end? I I don't know how much that
would upset their free to air broadcasters if it was such a
low price point, but I'm not really too sure.
Yeah. I mean, it's a great point in my
view. You just want the platform who's
buying your rights to do as wellas possible, get as many
eyeballs for as many much revenue as you can and then you
can do a better deal the next time around.

(45:07):
Ultimately, for that cycle itself, you just want as many
eyeballs on on it. But when you want to come to
renegotiation, you want to make sure they've made lots of money
so then you can make more money in the next cycle and that's
really it. So I do find it all really
confusing as well. And The thing is, is like to be
really clear about what the Sunday NFL ticket is and isn't,
it's for all the out of market games.
So as a Cincinnati Bengals fan, if the game's in Cincinnati and

(45:31):
for whatever reason it was blacked out because the NFL does
have some blackout rules, although they very rarely come
into play, it's not going to impact me at all.
I'm still going to be able to watch the Bengals game on my
free to air. And when we've spoken to people
from the NFL in the past, the NFL very clearly see Sunday
Ticket as a premium, you know, proposition.
It's not something that's just meant for your average football

(45:53):
fan. It's someone that, you know,
really is into it. You know, probably also into
betting, probably into fantasy sports.
The idea that this package, you know, is for the average fan or,
you know, is impacted because the NFL is quite right in their
defense saying that they probably have about as diverse

(46:14):
of a portfolio and a media strategy is probably anyone in
all professional sports. When we start thinking about the
Premier League, I like to keep banging the drum that only 52%
of all Premier League games can ever be viewed legally.
It's the polar opposite with theNFL.
The amount of games that are on free to air.
They've also got things streaming with Amazon Prime and
then they've got the Sunday NFL Ticket pass with YouTube.

(46:35):
I don't actually know if there'smany other sports properties
that are as open and available as the NFL.
So yeah, I I'm just really struggling to quite fully
understand it. Well, I mean, that is now the
now though I do wonder if you were right on the clock back a
decade how open and available that was.
I do think it's an interesting predicament around Sunday Ticket

(46:56):
and just this notion of out of market in market.
And now again, people are so spoiled for choice.
Is an out of market product as valuable a commodity as it was
10 to 20 years ago because people have so much access to so
many different types of entertainment, Whereas 10 to 20
years ago in in the US, everything I understand is

(47:18):
Sunday is the NFL day. You know, if you're a sports
fan, which you know, obviously the US over indexes and sports
fans relative to the population out of anywhere you are watching
at least one of the games of theNFL at least.
And if you're a real fan, you might if you're getting served a
bit of a dud game with the next free to S lot.
Am I more likely to go watch, you know, the Chiefs and the
Eagles play a game if they've got a a game on?

(47:40):
Yeah, I probably am. So it's an interesting
predicament. And I do wonder longer term what
the appetite for a Sunday marketproposition will be as YouTube's
democratize the access. But market dynamics are changing
where non key sports to someone individually just aren't as
valuable as they they maybe usedto be.

(48:02):
And highlights and stuff have become more valuable as a result
of that. So interesting to see what they
do with the longer term as well.But I mean, obviously a deal
when at this scale, we'll get everyone watching closely.
I'm sure that over the years in the US with the scale of the
deals that they've been happening over time and these
agreements where you have exclusive windows, for example,

(48:22):
in the NBA and there's there wasexclusive negotiation window
returner for a period of time They had before the next cycle
comes up. All these sort of things that
happened right across the entireindustry that there's going to
be instances of this where people are going to point to.
We could say, you know what, that wasn't for the benefit of
the consumer. Just is it enough of a benefit
that it was illegal and the costgoing to cost the the sporting

(48:44):
organization billions of dollars.
That is a whole different ball game.
And and finally, I wonder who have to pay, pay those bills
from the decades of for the decades of ownership since 94,
or is it going to be the currentownership group?
They've signed a waiver, basically anything that comes
their way since they've bought ateam, you know, like they're the
new Washington ownership, the the Denver owners, etcetera.

(49:06):
Do they have to foot foot the bill or does that bill get
forwarded on to the previous ownership and say, hey, when you
you cashed in on this, when you sold the organization at the
inflated prices? That could be a whole other ball
game of lawsuits if that does play out.
Well, it's definitely going to be a story we're going to have
to follow, Nick A, because you and I need to just educate
ourselves a little bit more. But at the same time, based on
what we've seen, how long it's taken this case to get to where

(49:28):
it is now, it's probably not going anywhere anytime soon.
But it will be really interesting because if it does
go, let's say, worst case scenario for the NFL, what that
means for other leagues and organizations to to have to take
into consideration. And then, you know, does that
transpire or does that, you know, move itself across the
pond? You know, we've talked about the
UK doesn't have a ton of competition, at least compared

(49:51):
to the US for sports rights. So, you know, be interesting,
you know, because, you know, as the consumer standing up for the
little man, Nick, we probably should be in support of them.
I'm just not sure if I fully understand it if I'm honest.
Well, yeah, definitely. It's something we have to follow
very closely. It could be an absolute needle
mover and could have cost a lot of people a lot of money.

(50:12):
But yeah, time, time will tell. Well, thank you everybody for
joining us this week. Like I said, very glad that Nick
was able to be here and join us and we will catch you next week.
Thanks everyone. Now before you go, if you liked
what you heard today, be sure torate and review and just let me
know what you think on social. You can find me on both social
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(50:33):
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Stream timers until next time.